


Your Heart in his Hands

by JustJReally



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Relationship, Crowley Whump (Good Omens), M/M, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Tags contain spoilers beyond this point:, Temporary Character Death, lots of demon metaphysics that are 100 percent made up, the plot exists purely as a vessel for me to write very specific angsty scenarios
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:55:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23036662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJReally/pseuds/JustJReally
Summary: Three weeks after the argument in St. James's Park, Crowley shows up on Aziraphale's doorstep, clearly desperate, asking for a favor.Despite his misgivings, Aziraphale agrees.He's not expecting Crowley to give him a ring.(Crowley isn't, either, but that's beside the point)
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 67
Kudos: 225





	1. 1862, three weeks after the Holy Water Incident

It’s been three weeks since Crowley met Aziraphale at the park and asked him for holy water. Aziraphale hasn’t seen Crowley in three weeks, which is not a long time for an immortal being, relatively speaking, but a very long time for this particular immortal being, considering the circumstances of their last meeting. Aziraphale has spent the past three weeks worrying, simultaneously terrified for Crowley and furious that he would even think about putting himself in danger like that. 

He considers going to Crowley and apologizing roughly once an hour. But he doesn’t know what he’ll say if Crowley asks for holy water again. He refuses to apologize for being worried about Crowley’s safety. But he wonders, if he doesn’t speak to Crowley, will Crowley go to someone else and make the same request? For all he knows, Crowley could have been telling the truth when he said he had other people to fraternize with. What if he asks another angel to get him holy water? What if he asks a human? What if they agree? But what if Aziraphale goes to him, and he convinces Aziraphale to give him the holy water, he always was good at convincing Aziraphale to do things, and then-

Aziraphale can’t force himself to think about it.

In the end, he resorts to reorganizing his bookshop to distract himself from his fears. Aziraphale hadn’t set up his shop with any semblance of order in the first place, since organization might make it easier for customers to attempt to purchase something. He hadn’t even considered organizing the place at any point in the intervening decades. But now? Well, now it’s organize his bookshop or worry himself into knots over Crowley, Crowley who could be off doing something dangerous right at this very second, Crowley who wanted Aziraphale’s help in destroying himself, Crowley who probably hates him now-

There’s a frantic knock at his front door. Aziraphale remains silent, hoping whoever it is will get the idea and go away. Customers in his bookshop are one problem. Customers who don’t have the sense to realize that no bookshop in the world is open 12:30 in the morning are another. When the knocking only becomes more insistent, he shouts, “We’re closed!”

“Angel, please just open the door,” is the response, familiar, frantic. Aziraphale finds himself at his front door with no idea if he miracled himself there or walked. He yanks open the door so quickly that Crowley, who’d been leaning on said door for support, stumbles and falls into him. One of Aziraphale’s arms ends up crushed between his body and Crowley’s as he catches him, but he doesn’t register the discomfort in the face of the fact that Crowley is _here_ and _not dead_.

His relief doesn’t last. As soon as he’s established that yes, Crowley is here, and no, he’s no longer in danger of breaking his nose on Aziraphale’s floor, his mind immediately jumps to the next most pressing concern: how deadly dangerous it would be if any of their superiors saw them in this position. He drops his arms and takes a quick step backward, miracling the door closed with a gesture. “What are you doing here?” he asks, three weeks’ worth of repressed worry and anger instilling his voice with more venom than the situation perhaps calls for, “You know what could happen if we’re seen together!”

Crowley is silent. He slumps back against Aziraphale’s doorframe in a way that’s functionally similar to, and yet completely at odds with, his usual calculatedly calm posture. It’s like an abandoned book dropped page-down on the floor of a library: A seemingly minor thing, just a little bit off, that promises much worse things to come. Gripped by a sudden sense of foreboding, Aziraphale takes a closer look at him. The picture he sees is not reassuring.

Crowley looks awful. Too pale, with bruiselike dark circles under his eyes, large enough that they show around the sunglasses. Like the door he’s leaning on the only thing keeping him upright. Sickly, almost, but neither of them are capable of getting sick.

Fear creeps into his lungs like water, like he’ll drown in it. “Crowley, what-”

“ ‘snot important,” Crowley says, waving him off. 

“Obviously it’s important, you’re clearly-”

“Well, it’s not important now-” The desperate expression he’d had in the park has returned in full force.

“Crowley. What did you do.” Aziraphale’s voice sounds alien to his own ears, steely calm even though his corporation feels like it’s falling to pieces around him.

“Just- take this,” Crowley says. His tone is deadened and hopeless; he’s already bracing for rejection. He holds out one hand, curled tightly around something Aziraphale can’t see.

Aziraphale reaches out. Whatever Crowley might fear, no matter how much he himself avoids addressing their relationship beyond the Arrangement, there was never any question if he would reach out when Crowley needed him.

Crowley seems almost reluctant to let go of the object he drops into Aziraphale’s hand. It’s a small metal snake, an exact replica of the one next to Crowley’s ear, almost absurdly heavy for its size and warm to the touch. The second it hits Aziraphale’s hand, it sends a wave of _something_ up his arm, a static shock made of emotion, like sticking your hand into a fire, if fire were made of the feeling of coming home after too long away. It feels familiar, and for a moment Aziraphale thinks of Heaven, before the War, before the Fall, before Sides-

The sensation stops, and the memory goes with it.

When he looks from the snake back to Crowley, Crowley’s standing on his own, and some of the despair has fallen away from his features. The vise of fear around Aziraphale’s lungs loosens. 

“What is this?” he asks. Without really thinking about it, he cups his hand protectively around the snake. It might be the stress of the past few days getting to him, but he swears he feels it curl a little more comfortably into the palm of his hand.

“It’s…” Crowley trails off. “Well, it’s me.” 

Aziraphale opens his mouth to say that yes, he knows that Crowley’s a snake, he wants to know why Crowley has given him this specific snake, but Crowley speaks over him.

“It’s part of me anyway. It’s insurance.” The word is spoken with a pointed sort of barb, and Aziraphale is seized by the sudden desire to throw this snake as far away as possible, if it’ll keep Crowley from doing something dangerously, suicidally stupid. His hand tightens on the metal involuntarily.

Crowley flinches.

“Hear me out,” he says. Aziraphale glares at him without replying. “If this all goes wrong. If they come after me. That-” he nods at Aziraphale’s hand, still clenched around the snake- “is part of me they won’t be able to touch. All I’m asking is that you keep it safe.” 

It is not the request Aziraphale had been expecting. It is still a stupid, dangerous request, and while he can put together that Crowley looks half-dead because he is currently holding part of Crowley’s essence in his hand, he has no idea the extent to what degree the separation is affecting him, or if it could get worse, or any of the side effects of the separation, really, and there are a million questions he’d like the answers to before he agrees to a plan as foolish as this one-

But Crowley’s asking for protection. He wants protection, not an out, he wants to stay safe, he wants to stay _with Aziraphale_ \- And if it keeps Crowley safe he’ll do anything.

“Of course,” Aziraphale says.

“You will?” Crowley asks.

“I will,” Aziraphale promises. All at once, the desperation and the tension leave Crowley’s body, replaced by a relief so powerful Aziraphale gets swept up in it. He wants to say something more, drop the subterfuge for once and speak to Crowley honestly, profess the lengths he’d go to in order to protect this piece of metal, but the knowledge that eyes could be on them at any moment stills his tongue.

Before he can attempt to put those feelings into words, even coded ones, the snake moves. Aziraphale scrambles to hold onto it, afraid it will fall to the floor and shatter or something equally awful. But all it does is curl itself around the ring finger of his left hand and go still again. It sits there like any ordinary ring, albeit a ring that fits perfectly and still carries an odd warmth. Warmth and, when Aziraphale concentrates on it, the barest flash of the same sensation he’d felt when Crowley first gave him the ring. He can almost define it this time, it’s heat and light but under that a sense of- caring. Fondness. It almost feels loved, like many of the used books that have fallen into his hands over the years. But it’s different, somehow, not loved but- Aziraphale shies away from the thought. He runs his opposite thumb along the ring instead, trying to figure out what in the world just happened. When the ring provides no answers, he returns his attention to Crowley.

“Sorry,” he says, “Wasn’t expecting it to do that.”

“I wasn’t either,” Crowley mutters. He seems flustered, a detail Aziraphale overlooks in the face of the fact that he also looks… better. Not healthy or normal, not by far, but he looks like a sick person who’s recently been given a blanket and a bowl of hot soup, instead of a sick person who’s been sitting outside in a blizzard for hours. 

“Well,” Aziraphale says, “I’ll just… leave it there, then.”

“Alright,” Crowley replies. They stare at each other for a moment, unsure of what else to say. Then Crowley straightens his coat and turns toward the door. 

“Would you- like to stay? Open a bottle of wine?” Aziraphale asks, suddenly afraid at the idea of Crowley wandering off into the night alone.

“Probably not a good idea,” Crowley says, already halfway out the door. “Walls have ears.”

“Some other time, then?”

Crowley looks directly at Aziraphale and smiles, a tiny, fragile thing. “Some other time,” he promises, and he’s gone, an unseasonable breeze gusting into the bookshop in his place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Disneygirl97 for betaing, title advice, and generally being the best.
> 
> Initially inspired by [this](https://ineffableplan.tumblr.com/post/188490320267/i-have-a-hc-that-isnt-showin-up-in-tags-and-i-want) tumblr post, but maybe don't click that link if you don't want spoilers. 
> 
> Relatedly, I'm on [tumblr](https://just-j-really.tumblr.com/)
> 
> The other four chapters are all written, they're just varying degrees of unedited, so I'm going to try to update regularly!


	2. 1862, two days later

Crowley is standing on the front steps of a church, weighing the life choices that brought him to this moment. These include “Becoming a Demon,” which was simultaneously A Mistake and Better Than the Alternative, and “Giving his literal heart to Aziraphale for safekeeping,” which was a mixed bag for other reasons.

He’s spent much of the past two days pacing and stewing over those reasons, to the point that he’d nearly worn holes in both his carpet and his ceiling. On the one hand, he hadn’t exactly thought this plan through. Or he had, so long as you considered “latching onto the first relatively safe way out of a trainwreck of threats and fear” a synonym of “thinking things through.” Case in point, he’d only realized, and started to consider, the potential consequences of his plan roughly thirty minutes after splitting himself, when doing so wasn’t much of a help to anyone.

But in the end, the plan had gone better than he could possibly have hoped. The metaphysical wound from the split had healed, but he can still sense the bit of himself that’s missing. He’s himself, but in two places, not half of what he used to be. More than that, from the moment he dropped that piece of himself into Aziraphale’s hand, he’s felt… safe. He’s protected. Aziraphale’s willing to help him. He hasn’t lost his best friend.

Those two on their own would have been enough to keep him up at night, rocketing wildly between anxiety over what could have gone wrong and relief beyond measure. Neither of them is the real problem.

Aziraphale’s offering protection, safety on a level he’s never had before, certainly not since he Fell. He can’t offer protection in return. If Hell comes for him, the best he can do is ‘not die.’ And he’s put Aziraphale in the line of fire by asking for his help.

Crowley would rather go through all the pain of Falling again, ten times over, than put Aziraphale in danger.

Thus, he’s standing in front of a church, step one of a plan that is, at the very least, more thought out than the first. Gingerly, he shoves the door open enough to slip through. Even more gingerly, he takes a step inside.

He’s not burned. The floor is barely even warm. In the back of his mind, he can sense that his presence is clashing with the church on a fundamental level, like he’s shoved the wrong ends of two magnets together, but it’s a far cry from his previous experiences with consecrated ground. He fights the urge to start dancing in the middle of the aisle. He does not fight the urge to stick his tongue out at a stained-glass angel that’s probably supposed to be Michael.

When he takes a few more steps and the ground refrains from burning him, he begins looking in earnest for holy water. The church is deadly silent, and the stained-glass windows light the room in odd, colorful patches that interfere with his night vision. He twitches at every miniscule noise, waiting for something to go horribly wrong; he doesn’t truly expect that anyone in Heaven is keeping a particular eye on this church, but the sense of Wrongness is wearing on him. Not to mention, he absolutely expects that any noise could be a priest or groundskeeper who might come in, somehow notice his eyes through the sunglasses, and decide to hit him over the head with a shovel.

He wastes a good ten minutes looking for locked rooms and secret hiding places before he notices the large basin of water sitting on a podium to the right of the church doors. While Crowley knows, logically, that holy water doesn’t matter to humans in the same way it matters to occult beings- to them it’s a blessing, not a weapon, and he will never be able to make sense of that one- he still thinks that someone should have invested in a lock. Or a lid, at the very least. Walking up to that basin and scooping out some holy water seems too easy.

_It’s not too easy,_ he tells himself. _You literally had to rip your heart out and give it to someone else for this to work, that’s the opposite of easy._

He saunters over to the basin, ready to grab some holy water and make his escape- and freezes.

He’s thought this out. For all intents and purposes, he’s currently safely… wherever Aziraphale is, so touching holy water will do nothing to him. At worst it might sting a little, it absolutely won’t kill him. The whole point of giving Aziraphale part of himself was that things like this wouldn’t be able to kill him.

It’s one thing to know that, it’s another thing to stare down a bucket of water, every instinct screaming that he’ll die a horrendous, painful, inescapable death if he breathes wrong or looks at it too closely. The flask he’d brought for this task suddenly seems entirely inadequate. _Maybe I should come back with some gloves_ , he thinks, eyeing it critically, _Or a container with a very long handle._

He’s about to give the whole thing up as a loss, maybe go find some humans to do the job for him, when the church doors begin to open.

In a split second of panic, he sticks the flask, and by extension his hand, directly into the basin.

It feels approximately how he imagines sticking his hand in a vat of boiling water would feel. The only thing that keeps him from screaming is the fact that someone is still entering the church, and he knows, from personal experience, that humans react badly to beings that scream in pain upon coming in contact with holy things. He yanks his hand out of the holy water, fumbles the top back onto the flask, and turns to shove past this person and run into the night like any reasonable, human, holy water thief would do, all while biting his lip to stop himself from cursing expressively at the pain in his hand- and stops short.

Aziraphale is standing directly in front of him, moonlight catching in his hair, looking eerily reminiscent to one of the stained-glass windows. A guardian, hope and healing incarnate, but stony, only distantly concerned.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale says.

Crowley gives him a curt nod.

“What are you _doing_ here?”

“Repenting my sins,” says Crowley, unconvincingly. It is unconvincing partially because he’s gritting his teeth through the pain in his hand, and mostly because he can’t stop himself from smirking. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Looking for you. You left quite abruptly the other night.” The worry in Aziraphale’s tone is undeniable, an enormous, lit up banner in an aniline-dyed shade of red.

While ‘guilt’ is one of the emotions that demons aren’t supposed to feel, and one that Crowley would rather pretend he doesn’t feel, he wishes he hadn’t disappeared so quickly. At the time, he’d wanted a moment to quietly deal a threefold layer of panic. He hadn’t realized how much panic he’d inadvertently passed on to Aziraphale.

“Um- I had to-” Crowley begins, without a clear idea of how he’s going to end that sentence.

“What did you do to your _hand_?” Aziraphale asks, sounding even more worried.

_It’s that bad?_ Crowley wonders, glancing down at the hand in question. When he hadn’t caught fire or started to melt, he’d figured he’d got out of the situation unscathed, even if his hand did hurt so badly he wasn’t about to try moving it, even to let go of the flask. So he’s dismayed, if not entirely surprised, to find that his skin’s gone a mottled red and is already beginning to blister. Given the circumstances it’s not a bad burn; he’d had worse from an incident in a churchyard back in the 1430s, but it does put a damper on any other holy-water-related plans he’d had. “Bless it,” he says, with feeling.

He looks back to Aziraphale, who stares coolly at him, waiting for an answer.

Crowley decides he’s lost this battle. “Stuck it in the holy water,” he says, words running together, and starts for the door. If he gets outside, he figures, he can miracle the worst of the burn away; he’s not about to try to summon the powers of Hell in the middle of a church.

Aziraphale lets him pass, but follows at his shoulder. “Very funny,” he snaps. “What did you really do?”

“Stuck it in the holy water- thing,” Crowley repeats. He moves to wave the flask around as proof, and thinks better of that idea at the last second. The last thing he needs right now is to accidentally splash himself.

The twitch of his hand still catches Aziraphale’s attention. Or rather, draws Aziraphale’s attention to the flask, and its contents, rather than the burn. Crowley can practically hear the pieces in his head slotting together, and he picks up his pace, hoping to Somebody that he can get outside before they have another argument like the one in the park -

“You what?” Aziraphale’s voice is quiet. He doesn’t sound angry, he sounds devastated, and that’s worse than anything Crowley had been expecting.

He hadn’t been entirely certain what Aziraphale had objected to during that argument: the danger in general, or the thought of being caught fraternizing with Crowley. The former was an expected reaction, a step in their usual dance at a time and place when Crowley absolutely couldn’t afford to join. The latter was too crushing to contemplate. A third option, one he’d never dared to consider, is quickly becoming obvious: that Aziraphale had objected to the danger to Crowley, specifically.

He’s standing in the doorway, a breath away from unconsecrated ground and an end to the thrice-be-blessed sensation that his entire hand is made of fire.

Aziraphale’s frozen in place two steps behind him.

Crowley turns around. “Angel,” he says, trying his best to sound reassuring, “I promise I can explain. Just- somewhere else, please?” He waves his uninjured hand at the interior of the church. “I’m not exactly welcome here.” Walking backward, so that Aziraphale knows he’s not going to bolt into the night, he takes another step down the stairs. Aziraphale follows cautiously, as though Crowley were a wounded animal he’s trying not to spook.

The sense of Wrongness stops pulling at Crowley once he’s out of the church, but he doesn’t relax until he’s down the steps and standing on the street outside. He must relax visibly, because Aziraphale’s demeanor immediately shifts. “Now,” he asks, with a commanding air that reminds Crowley of Heaven, “Are you dying?”

“No no no, it’s nothing to worry about, see?” Crowley draws some power up from Hell and heals his hand, then holds it out for Aziraphale to inspect. There’s still a blister forming at the base of his thumb, but the hand itself barely hurts anymore. “It’s like I told you. As long as you’ve got that ring, little things like holy water can’t hurt me.” Deep down, Crowley knows he’s overdoing the bravado, and from the look on Aziraphale’s face, it’s not as reassuring as he’d hoped.

“Look, there’s a reason I-” Crowley says. _Asked you for holy water in the first place and nearly wrecked the best thing in my life since before the Fall_ , he does not say. “This wasn’t some- Things have got bad down there.” Just talking about it, he finds himself tensing up, trying to appear more imposing than he actually is. He’s fighting the ingrained desire to lash out and run away in the aftermath. But- Aziraphale’s listening to him. The Heavenly mask is cracking, he’s watching Crowley with genuine concern in his eyes, and that makes it easier to continue speaking. “I know this is dangerous but I’m in danger from Hell no matter what happens. And if you’re protecting me…”

“What are they doing?” Aziraphale asks quietly. Crowley is silent.

Because how is he supposed to explain

_Being pulled into a side room, elbow to elbow with other demons, breathing in the muck and the cold of Hell, knowing that he’ll reek of mildew by the time he leaves and wondering if anyone will notice if he slips out early and-_

_A demon, in chains, dragged into the room; he’s been tortured, extensively, there’s blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and he’s still wearing a body, and Crowley feels suddenly uncomfortable in his own borrowed skin and-_

_A speech. The advances Hell has made! When the final battle comes, victory will_ _easily be ours! Death to anyone who opposes us!_

_And-_

_Watching this other demon die._

_He dies slow._

and make any semblance of sense? How is he supposed to put into words the knowledge that’s sat cold in his chest since that day: _they’ll be coming for me, next._

“They executed another demon. Recently. For letting information slip to Heaven,” Crowley manages. “What he was doing- it’s nothing, compared to-” _To deliberately working with an angel, for centuries. To falling in love with one._ “And the way they did it-”

There’s nothing for it. He stops time, hoping that no one’s paying attention to his use of miracles tonight, and speaks without pausing for breath, “They’ve figured out a way to kill other demons, permanently, by chaining them to their corporations and killing them alongside it. It only works on demons who were issued bodies.” In the end, he doesn’t need to say the words he’d been dreading, given the way Aziraphale’s features harden, he knows he understands. “Aziraphale-” Crowley adds, somewhat desperately. He reaches out to grab Aziraphale’s hand and stops just short, his arm falling uselessly to his side. “This could kill angels, too.”

With that, the only warning he knows how to give, he lets the process of time resume.

“If I have holy water at least I can defend- us.” It’s an admission of something, that ‘us’, one he’s not sure either of them are ready for, not now, not after everything, and it slips off his tongue anyway.

Aziraphale is quiet for a moment. Then he holds out his hand for the flask.

“Let me at least dry that off for you,” he says, voice rough. Crowley hands it over.

“Keep it,” he says, “If you need to. Just-” _give me some assurance that you’ll be safe, if they come for me. Let me protect you like you’re protecting me._

Aziraphale snaps his fingers, and a large bottle appears in the hand that isn’t holding the flask. He pours the flask out into it, and keeps pouring; he’s putting more holy water in the bottle than the flask could possibly have contained originally. The whole time, he keeps a careful eye on Crowley. At last, he seems to come to a decision, pockets the flask, and caps the bottle.

“Here,” he hands the bottle to Crowley. His thumb brushes Crowley’s singed hand, and the lingering pain vanishes instantly. “Now stop taking unnecessary risks.”


	3. 1941, immediately after the bombing of a church

“That could have gone better,” Crowley says, when they’ve almost reached Aziraphale’s bookshop. He’s speaking mostly to fill the silence, Aziraphale hasn’t said anything since just after the bomb dropped, but he stands by that statement. Aziraphale was nearly shot. He’d been splashed with holy water shoving Aziraphale out of the way of a gun-toting Nazi, and the burns are still smarting. Aziraphale had almost lost some of his favorite books. He’s exhausted from pulling off two major miracles back-to-back, with half of himself still locked away somewhere. If all had gone according to plan, they wouldn’t even have been in that church in the first place.

He supposes it could have gone worse, too; they’re both still alive and incorporated, and he’d managed to save Aziraphale’s books from a variety of unpleasant fates.

Aziraphale hasn’t answered, though, and Crowley darts a nervous glance at him, wondering if he should adjust his opinion of the situation. He’s staring out the windshield, a dazed expression on his face that Crowley supposes could be the result of having a bomb dropped on one’s head.

“Aziraphale?” he prompts.

“Oh. Yes,” Aziraphale says, breaking out of his trance. He snaps his fingers, and the sting of Crowley’s burns stops immediately.

“You weren’t listening to me at all, were you?” Crowley asks, grinning delightedly. ‘Being ignored’ might not be a pleasant experience, in and of itself, but he loves when Aziraphale lets his perfectly angelic walls drop and is exactly himself, even if ‘exactly himself’ is the sort of being who will get lost in his own thoughts and completely ignore his company. Especially since ‘exactly himself’ is the sort of being who will heal Crowley’s burns without a thought. 

“Well I- Of course I- Have you been driving this fast this _whole time_?”

Crowley laughs. He pulls up to the curb in front of the bookshop, at speeds that would have caused a normal car to give up entirely and possibly crash through the bookshop wall, and stops without incident.

Aziraphale doesn’t get out. The car is very silent for a moment.

“Crowley.” Aziraphale stops speaking abruptly, hesitation coloring his voice in a way Crowley’s never heard before. Crowley turns to him expectantly. “Would you like to come in?”

Something about the way he says it, the fact that he waits for Crowley when he gets out of the car, the warm glow of the bookshop lights peeking out into the street as he opens the door- feels like coming home.

Crowley hasn’t been in Aziraphale’s bookshop since 1902. He has new couch, several hundred new books, and some new clutter (although some of the clutter is just in new places, and has probably been in Aziraphale’s possession since the early 10’s AD). Other than that, the building has not changed. Crowley is looking around, trying to figure out which piles of paper have moved since he was last here, when he feels a rush of comfort, and his exhaustion melts away entirely. He turns to see Aziraphale sliding a ring- _Crowley’s_ ring- back onto his finger. “I didn’t want to bring it near a church,” Aziraphale says, looking embarrassed.

“Good idea,” Crowley says. He fights the urge to say something else; even a ‘thank you’ puts him at risk of waxing poetic about how deeply he appreciates Aziraphale caring for his soul, and he knows that isn’t the sort of thing they can talk about aloud. He can’t stop himself from staring at Aziraphale, smiling a bit besottedly, but that doesn’t disrupt any sort of status quo. In fact, Aziraphale’s staring back at him, a smile beginning to tug at the corners of his lips.

“Wine!” Aziraphale says, a bit too loudly, and half-runs for the back room. “Make yourself comfortable!” he adds over his shoulder.

“Well,” Crowley says to the air. Bewildered and a little lonely, he throws his coat over a chair and makes his way through the crowded space to perch on a sofa next to Aziraphale’s desk.

Aziraphale returns with a bottle of wine. “Thank you. Again. For the books,” he says, as he pours Crowley a glass.

“It’s just _books_ ,” Crowley replies. While he manages to say this in a teasingly dismissive tone, he can’t do anything about the lovesick smile on his face, except take a long drink and hope that he can pass the blush that’s creeping across his cheeks as a side effect of the wine. Aziraphale gives him a look of half-pretend indignation at the idea that these could be ‘just’ books. Crowley very happily prods him into explaining why these are, in fact, extremely important books, and settles in to listen.

Three hours later, the conversation has turned from books of prophecy to the possibility of humans figuring out space travel to something about Jane Austen, and Crowley’s taken off his sunglasses and curled into a more comfortable position on the couch. He’s warm and half-asleep and pleasantly tipsy, listening to Aziraphale talk about one of his recent acquisitions for the bookshop.

It is, of course, at this exact moment that the universe decides to make trouble for him. Aziraphale breaks off in the middle of his sentence to whisper, “Hide!” and Crowley finds himself being shoved into the back room while still trying to shake off the last vestiges of sleep. By the time he’s got his bearings, the door’s been shut behind him, and he can hear voices in the front room.

“… been sent to give you a commendation for your recent miracle,” says a voice. It’s not a voice Crowley recognizes, and he’s pressed up against the door trying to figure out if he knew this angel before the Fall or not, when he realizes that there is an angel in the front of Aziraphale’s bookshop, very much in smiting range.

He weighs his options. He could sneak out the back while the angel’s distracted, or miracle himself somewhere else, but that would mean leaving his glasses and coat and- who is he kidding.

He’s going to stay. Of course he’s going to stay. He may be in danger here, but if something goes wrong he’ll be here to protect Aziraphale, and if the angel notices his presence he can… act like he’s spying. Or say he’s been taken prisoner. Or something.

He really, desperately hopes the angel hasn’t noticed his coat.

The angel is saying something about how, while they appreciate Aziraphale’s efforts keeping knowledge away from the Nazis, they’d appreciate it if he directed his ‘thwart evil’ efforts at more demonic targets in the near future, and Aziraphale is saying yes, of course, he just couldn’t let those books of prophecy fall into the wrong hands.

Crowley’s almost convinced they’ve gotten away with it when the angel breaks off in the middle of a sentence to ask, in a thoroughly disgusted tone, “What the Hell is that?”

“What do you mean?” Aziraphale asks.

“The- the _thing_ on your hand.” It’s a very similar tone to the one humans use when talking about snakes, or large spiders, and Crowley is doubly insulted. And then terrified. _Can I burst in there and act like this was all a cunning trap?_ he wonders. _Will that do more harm than good?_

“Oh, this? I’ve been using it to keep track of the demon Crowley’s whereabouts,” Aziraphale says, so confidently that for a split second, even Crowley almost believes him. “He’s clever adversary, you know, you can’t be too prepared.” Despite the circumstances, Crowley’s heart warms at the compliment.

“That’s not a bad idea.” The angel says. They lower their voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You’ve heard about the new weaponry we’ve developed, right?”

“Oh. I don’t really… get back to Heaven much.”

“Well. We’re working on something, you may have a more permanent solution to your demon problems in the near future. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

“Oh. Lovely.”

“You should try to report in more often, you miss these things.” There’s a long, dangerous pause. “You know, they worry about the loyalties of some angels. Angels who may be growing too… attached… to Earth.”

If demons could kill telepathically, the sheer fury Crowley feels at hearing this angel threaten Aziraphale would have evaporated them on the spot. As it stands, he’s powerless, any miracles he could do now would just draw attention, and probably do more harm than good. So he stands there and seethes, and almost misses the next words out of Aziraphale’s mouth, which turn out to be a lot of “Yes, of course, but things are just so busy down here, the Demon Crowley has been taking advantage of the war to Scheme…” and end in “…I should really be getting back to work now,” spoken in the tones of a perfect angelic soldier. “Evil never rests, you know.”

"Of course."

An electric sound and the smell of ozone, followed by a tense silence. Then Aziraphale opens the door to the back room, a tight expression on his face. "You should leave," he says.

“Of course,” Crowley mumbles, and pushes past Aziraphale to gather his belongings.

It hurts, of course- Aziraphale pushing him away will never not hurt- but that feeling is petty and unremarkable compared to the fact that an angel just threatened Aziraphale.

He wants to stay. He wants to stay, and make sure Aziraphale’s really alright, needle him into talking about what happened or just curl up on the couch and rant about ferns until they both calm down.

He can’t. He doesn’t know if they’re actually safer pretending not to know each other, but he does know that Aziraphale believes they are, and he’d rather let Aziraphale have that illusion of safety, if only for tonight.

_Even if he could get dragged to Heaven and killed the second you turn your back?_ he asks himself, and he can’t come up with an answer. _Even if this could play out again, with you absent, you with no way to protect him?_

_Well,_ he realizes, with a sinking sense of dread, _There is one way._

Crowley stops dead a foot from the front door and turns to face Aziraphale. He considers trying to convince Aziraphale to keep some hellfire on hand in case of emergency, abandons that plan immediately because Aziraphale will never allow fire near his books, hell- or otherwise, and instead says the very thing he hadn’t wanted to say. “Let me take the ring back.”

Aziraphale looks stricken. Crowley forges on, tripping on his words in a desperate attempt to make sure Aziraphale understands him. “If they’re targeting you- if the ring draws their attention, and they figure out- if this is putting you in danger-”

He achieves his desired outcome, in that Aziraphale no longer looks stricken. In fact, Aziraphale looks as though he is suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. “I knew this was dangerous when I agreed to it _fifty years ago_ ,” he says, fondly frustrated. “If something goes wrong, I can deal with it. I just did. And if I can’t, I trust you to be there. Like tonight, in the church.” It’s an admission Crowley never expected to hear; it leaves him feeling suddenly wrong-footed and yet a million times freer. Aziraphale continues speaking, in a much more serious tone. “You’re right, though. You should take the ring back.”

The weight that had lifted off Crowley’s shoulders immediately comes crashing back down. “There’s no need, you keep it,” he says, hoping to end the conversation now and escape into the night.

Aziraphale gives him a _look_ , the fondness and frustration now laced with confusion. “You said this was dangerous and liable to get us caught half a minute ago.”

“I- well- that’s not what I meant,” Crowley fumbles for the proper words. “I’m safer this way, but I can’t- can’t take my safety at the cost of yours.”

“You’d be in danger, too. If Heaven found out about the ring.” There’s a tone to Aziraphale’s voice that Crowley hasn’t heard since their argument in the park. “If you think this is a risk, then please, find someplace safer to keep it-”

“There is no someplace safer!” Crowley bursts out, louder than he means to. “No matter where I keep it, someone could find it, or steal it, or a blessed bomb could fall on it! There’s no one else I’d trust with it. But you-” Crowley breaks off, as the sheer, beautiful impossibility of the situation hits him again. “You just lied to another angel’s face to protect me. Of course you’re the only one I’d trust with this.” He’s so focused on making Aziraphale understand what this means to him that he speaks without considering that this may not be the right time to prod Aziraphale about where his loyalties lie.

The indignation Crowley had expected flashes briefly across his face, replaced almost immediately by a softer expression that Crowley dares not name. “I am?” Aziraphale asks. Crowley nods. That wrong-footed feeling is back, stronger; they’ve wandered away from the solid ground of their relationship to the cliff’s edge of something unknown, and one wrong step could send them flying.

But looking at that soft expression on Aziraphale’s face, the unknown doesn’t seem so threatening.

And Crowley has never been one to avoid a fall.

“Of course I do.” Cautiously, he takes Aziraphale’s hands in his own and runs a finger over the ring. It’s a strange sensation, like touching a limb that’s fallen asleep, but he puts that out of his mind. “This isn’t just ‘a bit of myself,’ this is my heart. It’s the core of me. You’re the only one I’d trust to keep it safe. Even if everything were different, even if Hell and Heaven both loved me- you’re the only person I’d give it to. It’s always been you.”

Aziraphale is quiet for a moment, but he uses their joined hands to pull Crowley closer. “I’d keep it,” he whispers, managing to catch Crowley’s eyes even through the sunglasses. “Even if everything were different.” His voice is gentle and quiet and so, so, achingly honest that Crowley can’t help the words that fall from his lips.

“I love you, angel.”

Aziraphale gasps softly. A spike of anxiety lances through Crowley’s chest- _there you go you’ve done it you’ve broken everything_ \- but before it can take root, Aziraphale leans in and kisses him. Kisses him, soft and sweet and longing, and Crowley’s brain near dissolves on the spot. He drops one of Aziraphale’s hands so that he can cup his cheek instead, and Aziraphale wraps his arm around Crowley’s waist and pulls him close. It feels like a promise, of safety and love and a future where they are still together.

After a moment, Aziraphale breaks the kiss, but he doesn’t let go of Crowley. “I love you, too,” he says. His voice is quiet Crowley might have assumed he’d imagined it, were it not for the fact that their lips are brushing as Aziraphale speaks. “I don’t know how it took me so long to realize- I love you.” He sounds thrilled at the realization, and the bits of Crowley’s brain that were still functioning fizzle out like fireworks, overwhelmed by the thoughts _Aziraphale loves me_ and _Aziraphale is_ happy _that he loves me_. He buries his head in Aziraphale’s shoulder, dazed and delighted, heart impossibly light. “I never would have said anything- if anyone finds out-” he adds. There’s a question in his voice, but he keeps his arm locked around Crowley’s waist.

“We’ve kept worse secrets,” Crowley whispers, trailing one thumb along the back of Aziraphale’s hand in soothing circles, “We can keep this one.”

“You’ll be careful?”

“Of course.”

When he raises his head to meet Aziraphale’s eyes, Aziraphale kisses him again, so fierce and desperate he sees stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The church-bombing-book-rescuing deal is a fixed point in time. The events leading up to it are slightly altered because Crowley and Aziraphale are actually speaking to each other in this timeline, but assume the event itself played out similarly enough that it would’ve been weird for me to write the whole thing out. 
> 
> Bonus points for anyone who can figure out when I started feeling like I was writing Lord of the Rings fic by accident.


	4. 2019, hours before the end of the world

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: I updated the tags for this chapter, please give them a read! (and if you're reading this in the future, the spoiler tags are for this chapter)
> 
> Less important note: I kept wanting to write a scene for this AU that takes place in the present of the show/book, but " _Good Omens_ but Aziraphale and Crowley are secretly dating" is arguably just _Good Omens_ , so I did not.

The front door of Crowley’s apartment has been forced open.

Aziraphale had come here after being unable to reach him on the phone, afraid he’d find that Crowley had indeed left for the stars before Aziraphale could tell him he was right, Heaven didn’t care about stopping Armageddon. The reality, it seems, is worse than his fears.

Wishing, for the first time in his existence, that he’d kept the flaming sword, Aziraphale makes his way inside. Apart from the door, nothing in the apartment looks destroyed or out of place, but there’s a stillness to the air Aziraphale doesn’t like. He’s debating his next course of action when he hears a noise that might be classified as a scream. It doesn’t sound human, on the basest of levels- it reverberates all wrong, and there’s a strange, hissing quality to it. It sounds like someone in pain who’s run out of both the willpower not to scream and the energy to do so.

It has been 6000 years since the war in Heaven and the Fall, and Aziraphale has grown quite comfortable pretending to be a human whose biggest concerns are finding rare books and keeping them. He is happy with his books and sushi and interesting human dances, would be thrilled if he never has to fight in another war. But he was given a flaming sword for a reason.

The Aziraphale that throws open the door of Crowley's office is the Aziraphale that smote demons 6000 years ago. What he sees is-

A pile of clothes on the floor by the door, drenched in something awful that reeks of burning sulfur.

The room a wreck, paper torn and scattered.

A demon in a grubby brown coat and an atrocious human disguise, lifting Crowley up by his scarf, holding a knife to his throat.

And Crowley.

Crowley.

He’s bleeding from at least three separate wounds, one in his shoulder, another across his arm, a third in his stomach, going by the amount of blood soaking his clothes. He’d been weakly attempting to fight off his attacker; when Aziraphale enters the room, his arms drop to his sides. His eyes have gone full serpent, and there are tiny patterns of scales running down the backs of his hands and across his cheekbones.

His glasses, Aziraphale realizes, have been knocked off and stepped on.

The sight removes any thought from Aziraphale’s head but righteous angelic fury, on a level even Heaven was never able to inspire. The doubts and the ever-present fear of the previous week no longer matter. Nothing matters but destroying this demon for daring to lay a finger on Crowley. Most humans looking at him would simply see a polite bookseller gone suddenly, alarmingly emotionless. But a demon would have a peculiar double vision: the bookseller overlapped by a being made of fire and eyes and rage.

"Angel," Crowley whispers, smiling like a man watching a sunrise he never thought he’d live to see.

The demon holding him takes one look at Aziraphale and, remembering what it was like to face him during the War, wisely decides to flee. He lets go of Crowley and sinks into the floor, vanishing before Aziraphale can do anything but take a threatening step toward him.

Aziraphale turns for the door, ready to follow him to Hell and destroy him- 

Crowley crashes face first onto the floor in a pool of his own blood and doesn't move.

The calm, righteous fury vanishes as quickly as it came, replaced by a dozen thoughts, none of them comforting. _He’s dying. He’s discorporating. If he discorporates will they kill him for good?_

Aziraphale drops to his knees at Crowley's side, miracling his wounds closed with a gesture. As soon as he thinks he can move Crowley without hurting him, he cautiously helps him roll onto his back.

"Angel," Crowley whispers. He smiles at Aziraphale, absolutely, blissfully happy, "You came back."

It is a testament to how terrified Aziraphale is that he does not retort that is was Crowley who threatened to leave the galaxy, not him.

"He’s gone," he says instead, "You're safe." Crowley doesn't immediately respond, either to curse out his attacker or attempt to thank Aziraphale, and the fear that Aziraphale had been suppressing smugly surfaces. "Can you stand?" Aziraphale asks. His voice shakes.

"Probably not. Lost a lotta blood, here."

"But I - I healed you," Aziraphale says, as if that will somehow change the greyish cast of Crowley’s skin or the unsettlingly fast way he’s breathing.

" 'Can't heal what they did," Crowley says. His tone is unsettlingly nonchalant. "Surprised I held out this long, honestly." His entire body seizes up, and he lets out a tiny cry of pain. Aziraphale tries to heal him again, but there’s nothing to heal; the miracle worked the first time. And yet- Aziraphale can sense how much pain he’s in, and when he tries to miracle that away, he can only succeed at dulling it.

There’s something else wrong, he realizes. Once he’s looking for it, it’s easy to spot: a poison seeping outward from the wounds themselves. It’s knitting Crowley’s self and his corporation together in a way that they shouldn’t be, like sewing a human’s clothes directly onto their body. Aziraphale fights the urge to gag. He remembers a conversation a century gone, and wonders if either of them had truly expected this.

"Wonder if Lucifer'll be mad," Crowley continues, as though he's speculating on the weather. "Probably wanted to kill me personally, the bastard."

"Don't say that." Aziraphale doesn't know when he started crying, but there are tears streaming uncontrollably down his face. 

"Aziraphale-" Crowley reaches out for him, but he can barely lift his hand. "I-" As gently as he can, Aziraphale gathers Crowley into his arms. Crowley sighs contentedly. "Thank you."

"No no no no no," Aziraphale says, the words running together, "There has to be something I can do." If he can figure out a way to counteract the poison, or at least stop it from spreading, maybe he can-

"Already did," Crowley whispers. "You kept me safe."

Aziraphale barely hears him; he’s too focused on trying to fix whatever damage the demon did, unwilling to think of anything else or look up or move or even breathe. It takes three tries, but he manages it, a more complicated miracle than he’s performed in centuries. 

“There,” Aziraphale says, forcing too much cheer into his voice, “All fixed.” He doesn’t dare pry his focus away from Crowley’s wounds, but the miracle seems to have held. The poison’s gone, winked out of existence. “Crowley?”

He doesn’t respond. His eyes are still open, locked on Aziraphale, but his gaze is blank and fixed and empty.

Moving mechanically, Aziraphale miracles Crowley's sunglasses back into shape and places them over his eyes. It feels like the pinnacle of cruelty to leave him otherwise. It’s only then, the act of doing a simple thing for Crowley that he’ll never be able to do for himself again, that reality catches up to him.

He’s gone.

Crowley’s gone.

After all that, Aziraphale couldn’t protect him.

“You couldn’t have spent half the energy you put into saving me on saving yourself?” he asks woodenly, the only thing he can dredge up out of a black hole of grief. “You couldn’t have-” he cuts himself off before the word can turn into a sob. He won’t cry. He’s furious at Crowley for leaving him and furious at the universe for letting it happen and he will not cry. “You told me you were doing all this to protect yourself. You said you had a _plan_ ,” he continues, more frantic now, words running into each other. “You said if this went wrong you’d-”

The ring on his finger curls a little tighter, as though it’s trying to comfort him, sending out a wave of _something_ ; fire and starlight and love, more love than Aziraphale can quantify. It brings him back to that night over a century ago, when Crowley gave him the ring.

Aziraphale looks down at his hand. He’s half-expecting the ring to disintegrate the second he looks at it, but it remains.

“You said this was you,” Aziraphale says slowly. Operating on some half-formed idea, one he’s afraid to think about too hard for fear it will fall apart, he takes the ring off. “You said that if everything went wrong, this would be a part of you they couldn’t hurt.” _Please. Let this work_ , he prays, entirely uncertain whom he’s praying to. 

He takes Crowley’s hand, fighting back a new wave of grief at how lifeless it is, and slides the ring onto his finger. As soon as he lets go, the ring melts away, leaving a tiny tattooed snake in its place.

There’s a second of absolute stillness.

Then Crowley takes in a horrible, rasping breath, bolting upright like a person waking from a nightmare. He shoves himself out of Aziraphale’s lap, and winds up facedown, propped on one arm, gasping for air.

Aziraphale stays absolutely still. If he moves or breathes or thinks too hard about what’s happened, this will all fall apart, he knows it. He’ll be left with a corpse and a room covered in blood and he’ll- He’ll-

“Told you killing me wouldn’t work,” Crowley says. His breathing’s evened out; he doesn’t sound afraid or pained. If anything, he sounds smug. He sits up, miracling the blood out of his clothes. “I have friends-” And then he stares at Aziraphale blankly, pushing back his glasses. Aziraphale has always thought that Crowley’s eyes are beautiful, but never more so than now, as he stares at Aziraphale in utter confusion.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asks, trying very, very carefully not to hope.

“… You’re not Hastur,” Crowley says. Aziraphale fights back a bout of hysterical laughter at the statement. “You’re- oh.” His confused expression clears, and he throws his arms around Aziraphale’s shoulders in a clumsy embrace. “Thank you, Aziraphale,” he whispers.

Aziraphale wants to cling to Crowley and never let go, but he can’t manage to move, can’t put aside his grief and the fear, can’t even feel relief yet. It’s all he can do to tell himself that _it worked. It worked. He’s alive._ When a moment passes and he doesn’t return the embrace, Crowley pulls away. “What’s wrong?” he asks, his face a strange mixture of giddy relief and concern. Trancelike, Aziraphale reaches out and cups his cheek in one hand. Crowley leans into the touch, half-closing his eyes.

“You’re- I thought you’d died,” Aziraphale says wonderingly. He’s staring at Crowley like he’s the most beautiful thing on earth, like his very existence is a miracle. He is. He always was.

“I would have, if you hadn’t-” Whatever else Crowley had meant to say is cut off in a muffled, pleased noise as Aziraphale kisses him. It’s a brief, desperate kiss, desperate for contact, the confirmation that he’s alive, desperate to kiss him again, one more time, and let him know he loves him, and almost as soon as Aziraphale registers what he’s doing he finds himself sobbing into Crowley’s shoulder.

Crowley pulls Aziraphale close, curling up against him like they were made to slot perfectly into each other’s arms. “I’m here,” he whispers, “I’m alright. You saved me.” Aziraphale only holds him tighter. Crowley runs one hand in soothing patterns across Aziraphale’s back, still whispering comfortingly under his breath.

Slowly, Aziraphale’s racing mind calms, lulled by the sound of Crowley’s voice and the weight of his body pressed against Aziraphale’s, a physical reminder that he’s alive, that he’s safe. Slowly, his fear and shock melt away, replaced by the warm certainty of Crowley’s presence. Slowly, he becomes aware that he’s wrapped in a feeling of love, just as warmly as he’s wrapped in Crowley’s arms.

He’d been able to sense Crowley’s love ever since that night in 1941, when Crowley finally gave him a name for it. But it’s always been- partitioned off, muted. Now, with Crowley fully himself again, it’s overwhelming, in the way that a warm house and a pile of blankets would be overwhelming after too long in the cold.

Aziraphale shifts a little, so that he can see Crowley’s face without putting any unnecessary distance between them. “You’re not- there’s no lasting damage?” he asks, dreading the answer.

“None,” Crowley says, looking both happier and calmer than Aziraphale’s ever seen him. “That worked perfectly.” He’s clearly trying to keep his voice level and comforting, but a certain amount of gleeful malice slips into his voice as he adds, “It’d almost be worth going down to Hell just to see the looks on their faces- Although the look on Hastur’s face when you came in was worth a lot.”

“Happy to help,” Aziraphale says, with all the relief and joy of seeing Crowley alive and himself behind the statement.

“About earlier-” Crowley adds, avoiding Aziraphale’s eyes.

“You were right,” Aziraphale cuts over him.

“About leaving the planet?”

“No! You were right about there not being right people. Heaven doesn’t care, they’re not going to fix this.” He leans his forehead against Crowley’s. “You were right about our side,” he finishes, trying to imbue the statement with an apology for not realizing it sooner, with all the love he still can’t find words for.

“Of course I was right,” Crowley says, his tone immeasurably fond.

They might have stayed on Crowley’s floor, holding each other, for another millennia, but they’re brought back to their senses by the sound of Crowley’s phone ringing. The sudden intrusion of one thing outside the warm bubble of the two of them allows for others: the storm raging outside, the pile of melted demon on the floor. The end of the world.

“We need to go,” Aziraphale says, pulling away from Crowley and straightening his clothes. “The antichrist is in Tadfield- we can still fix this.”

Crowley, staring into the middle distance, is slow to reply. “I could stop time,” he says, quietly. “We could- I always thought we’d have more _time_.”

“We will,” Aziraphale says. “When this is over.”

Crowley just stares at him, anguished. “We have to fix this,” Aziraphale adds, with all the confidence he can muster. “But _we_ will fix this. Together.”

The look of anguish doesn’t quite leave Crowley’s face, but it’s mostly written over by determination. “Together,” he agrees, pressing a quick but earnest kiss to Aziraphale’s lips. Then he stands, miracling his clothes back into place and offering Aziraphale a hand up off the floor, “You said you knew where the antichrist was?”

They hold hands leaving the apartment, letting go only to get in the Bentley, and Crowley reaches over and takes Aziraphale’s hand again as soon as he’s sitting down. For the rest of the day, through burning highways and rains of fish and facing down Lucifer himself, he doesn’t let go of Aziraphale’s hand.


	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter felt like a weird place to end this, so I thought, why not throw in some unrepentant fluffy nonsense?
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!

The world doesn’t end.

Not much changes afterwards, really.

It’s strange that after everything, after the end of the world, after an incredibly tense night spent figuring out how to imitate each other and how, exactly, Aziraphale fixed the poisoning in the first place, after they faced each other’s executions-

That things would go back to normal.

Crowley introduces Aziraphale to the Golden Girls. They watch the first three seasons in one sitting, Crowley’s head in Aziraphale’s lap, and they keep getting distracted by conversation only for Crowley to break off in the middle of a sentence to say, ‘no wait, pay attention, this is a good bit.’

Some of Aziraphale’s books make their way to Crowley’s apartment, and stay there.

Crowley spends more nights at the bookshop, asleep in a bed Aziraphale miracled into existence for that express purpose. Aziraphale still doesn’t understand sleeping, but reading in bed while Crowley curls around him is another matter, even if, more often than not, he gets up after a few hours to knit or cook or try any of the other seventeen hobbies he picks up once Heaven’s no longer watching his every move.

A few of Crowley’s plants make their way to the bookshop. Somehow, they are still the greenest plants in London, despite the lack of sunlight in said bookshop. Perhaps more surprising is the fact that Crowley occasionally gives them grudging compliments.

Aziraphale reaches out to take Crowley’s hand in the park one afternoon, and neither of them flinches, or looks over their shoulder for death to come bearing down on them, and when they realize what’s happened a few minutes later they both start laughing in relief.

Crowley wiles Aziraphale into taking a break from reading _before_ he starts to collect dust with kisses and mugs of cocoa. It is a very clever trick.

Aziraphale refers Crowley as his ‘partner’ to a waitress, and Crowley spends the next fifteen minutes smiling at nothing in particular. Crowley returns the favor at Newt and Anathema’s joint bachelor party.

It may not be “normal,” in the sense that it is “exactly what they were doing before the apocalypse,” but at the same time… it’s normal.

Three years after the end of the world, at a table in a restaurant they’ve claimed as theirs for decades, Aziraphale gives Crowley a ring.

It is not, literally speaking, a piece of his heart.

But it means the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading!!! Thanks for sticking with me this long, it means the world to me.   
> And thanks to everyone who commented, I can't even tell you how happy it made me. Sorry if I never replied to you, I'm... bad... at Making The Words Go


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